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National Boards => General Highway Talk => Topic started by: jeffandnicole on April 10, 2021, 11:02:24 AM

Title: How many miles did you drive during the year of the pandemic?
Post by: jeffandnicole on April 10, 2021, 11:02:24 AM
While the exact date will vary based on where you live, we are thru one year of the pandemic so far. I've been using the Fuelly app since I got my new car in 2019 to keep track of my fuel and maintenance cost, and miles per gallon.

Looking back, I fueled up on March 11th 2020 and March 14, 2021, which gives me a close enough comparison for the year. I drove only 8,620 miles in that 12 month period, by far the least amount I've ever driven in a year. Of that, around 3,800 miles was driven on 3 road trips, to TN, FL and MD during that time. Which means driving around at home I only drove less than 5,000 miles all year. I would normally hit that mileage in less than 3 months.
Title: Re: How many miles did you drive during the year of the pandemic?
Post by: Max Rockatansky on April 10, 2021, 11:09:13 AM
About 30,000 on my own car (my Impreza) between my normal commute (it never changed) and stuff I went to go do.  Probably about another 3,000 miles on my wife's car and about 1,000 miles on my Challenger. 
Title: Re: How many miles did you drive during the year of the pandemic?
Post by: oscar on April 10, 2021, 11:45:14 AM
I'm not sure how to tote up my mileage, and in particular what to use for the starting point. For me, the starting point could be sometime in early March, as I was leaving Florida and started hearing reports about toilet paper shortages, and by mid-March I was seeing lots of snowbirds heading north along the I-95 corridor (some trying to return to Canada before the border closed). But Virginia's stay-at-home order didn't start until after I got back home.

The easiest estimate for my Subaru uses 3/19/20 as the starting point (car serviced after my return from Florida as the pandemic was beginning, before stay-at-home started), with 76,262 on the odometer. When the car was serviced about a year later, on 3/11/21, it had 120,916 miles on the odometer, for a difference of 44,654.

I have a second car which I use only for local travel, which would add a few thousand more miles driven between March 2020 and March 2021.
Title: Re: How many miles did you drive during the year of the pandemic?
Post by: froggie on April 10, 2021, 11:52:54 AM
The past year is approximately 50-60% of what I'd do in a "typical" pre-pandemic year.  Very few roadtrips outside of commuting (my commute is ~48 miles round trip) and essential shopping.
Title: Re: How many miles did you drive during the year of the pandemic?
Post by: formulanone on April 10, 2021, 12:00:04 PM
I put 27,000 miles on rental cars in the past 12 months, and about 8000 on my own car. Figure another 2000 for family trips in my wife's van.

The 27,000 figure is about 10,000 more than usual, because I've elected to work closer to home and fly less last year (only 41k miles versus a typical 70-85k in the air).
Title: Re: How many miles did you drive during the year of the pandemic?
Post by: ran4sh on April 10, 2021, 12:08:02 PM
I was an "essential worker", so I drove as many miles as I normally do and probably a little more. Looking at the odometer on my car compared to a year ago, it turns out I drove about 14,000 miles the past year.
Title: Re: How many miles did you drive during the year of the pandemic?
Post by: webny99 on April 10, 2021, 01:13:06 PM
I'm not sure of the exact mileage. A lot less on the weekends - no trips to Canada and fewer trips elsewhere - but only moderately less during the week.
Title: Re: How many miles did you drive during the year of the pandemic?
Post by: 1995hoo on April 10, 2021, 02:01:02 PM
I don't know because in addition to my primary car (for which I do know the full-year mileage), I've also done a fair amount of driving in both of my wife's cars (including a trip to Ohio last October) and a small amount of driving in my other car, and I don't know the mileage for any of those.
Title: Re: How many miles did you drive during the year of the pandemic?
Post by: Thing 342 on April 10, 2021, 02:38:44 PM
I drove 8500 miles in 2020 in my personal car. About ~4000 of those miles were in January thru March.
Title: Re: How many miles did you drive during the year of the pandemic?
Post by: tigerwings on April 10, 2021, 03:35:58 PM
About 30k on my company truck
1K on my personal truck
About 8k on the old SVU (now my daughter's ride)
About 2K on the new SVU (since December)

No driving for a vacation.
Title: Re: How many miles did you drive during the year of the pandemic?
Post by: sparker on April 10, 2021, 04:30:02 PM
About 6K on my personal Camry + another 1500 miles or so on GF's 4-runner; she put about 5K on that commuting from San Jose to her job in northern Fremont.  Also a little under 1K on rental trucks for moving parts and product from our San Jose office to a production facility near Galt as well as a major vendor in Alameda.  In total, the aggregate mileage was down about 30% from 2019; 2021, if things continue at their current pace, will be somewhere in between the '19 and '20 levels.
Title: Re: How many miles did you drive during the year of the pandemic?
Post by: cl94 on April 10, 2021, 04:50:19 PM
Since everything shut down in mid-March 2020, I've driven 13-14K in my own car and another 2,700 in a rental. This is probably 20-25% less than I normally do in a year.

Because my commute is less than a mile (and I typically walked it), there was minimal savings from not going into the office. Much of the difference comes from 1-2 fewer round trips to Buffalo (at least 600 miles each), but a lot was saved by eliminating most hiking trips to the Adirondacks and generally avoiding travel of more than an hour in April and May.
Title: Re: How many miles did you drive during the year of the pandemic?
Post by: Roadgeekteen on April 10, 2021, 04:58:59 PM
Maybe 1 around a parking lot- I just started driving.
Title: Re: How many miles did you drive during the year of the pandemic?
Post by: JoePCool14 on April 10, 2021, 05:20:38 PM
Probably almost the same as usual, but it's hard to tell since I didn't really have a "regular amount" to compare to prior. And now I'm at college and I don't have a car here to use, so no miles are driven.
Title: Re: How many miles did you drive during the year of the pandemic?
Post by: Brandon on April 10, 2021, 08:16:42 PM
About 29,000 miles on the car, less than the year before, but I also changed jobs just before the pandemic that did not require me to drive all over the state multiple times a week.
Title: Re: How many miles did you drive during the year of the pandemic?
Post by: dlsterner on April 10, 2021, 10:29:19 PM
About 18,000 - around the same as previous years.  I have a "critical" (so they tell me) job which cannot be done by telecommuting, so my day-to-day activities were mostly unchanged from 2019.
Title: Re: How many miles did you drive during the year of the pandemic?
Post by: hbelkins on April 10, 2021, 10:39:55 PM
I didn't really keep track, but I went from driving 600 miles in a two-week period (my daily commute is 30 miles one-way) to 60 in that same two-week work period due to telecommuting.

Other than trips to town (5-8 miles one-way, depending on which route I take, and then another two miles if I want to go to a certain store) I only took a handful of trips since last March.

-- One day trip to London, Ky., just to sightsee a little.
-- Two or three (I think) trips to Lexington to a doctor.
-- One trip to my brother's in Owen County to have him look at a broken computer.
-- A trip to Hazard to get a battery for the truck.
-- Just today, I went to London via Tyner and Annville, Corbin, back to London, and then back home through Manchester, Oneida, and Booneville.

Since the early March flooding damaged our local post office, I have been having to drive on to St. Helens (five miles past Beattyville) to mail packages, so that's adding a little mileage to my current still-low-mileage drives.
Title: Re: How many miles did you drive during the year of the pandemic?
Post by: dkblake on April 11, 2021, 03:44:11 PM
I bought a Highlander Hybrid in October and have needed to fill the tank twice since, so that gives a sense of how much I've driven.
Title: Re: How many miles did you drive during the year of the pandemic?
Post by: FrCorySticha on April 11, 2021, 07:57:17 PM
My travel dropped from about 20,000 miles a year to just over 15,000. Part of that was a job change and move that requires less driving, and part was fewer roadtrips and travel for meetings. Montana didn't shut down as hard as many other states, so there were still opportunities to travel for events or to meet up with friends.
Title: Re: How many miles did you drive during the year of the pandemic?
Post by: deathtopumpkins on April 12, 2021, 11:30:54 AM
About the same as normal. Between 30k and 40k miles on my primary vehicle. No commute to worry about, but multiple major roadtrips, including an 8,000-mile one. Domestically, 2020 was probably my biggest travel year yet.
Title: Re: How many miles did you drive during the year of the pandemic?
Post by: jemacedo9 on April 12, 2021, 11:56:53 AM
When I lived in WNY, I was averaging 25K/yr.
When I moved back to SE PA in 2016, my average dropped down to 15K/yr.
This past year that was down to maybe 7K.
Title: Re: How many miles did you drive during the year of the pandemic?
Post by: Big John on April 12, 2021, 02:24:32 PM
About 4000.
Title: Re: How many miles did you drive during the year of the pandemic?
Post by: JayhawkCO on April 12, 2021, 02:37:23 PM
I don't have an exact number, but I would ballpark 14,000 or so.  I had a one way road trip to Portland, some driving around the Twin Cities during a trip for a funeral, a one way road trip to Florida to pick up a new car and visit my parents, and then I increased my mileage in Colorado from 52% to 95%. 

Edit: I was in 31 different states in 2000.

Chris
Title: Re: How many miles did you drive during the year of the pandemic?
Post by: Bruce on April 12, 2021, 07:24:57 PM
Two jobs requiring long days of driving means I put in about 26,000 miles on my car in 2020. I'm hoping to use some miles on actual vacations instead this year.
Title: Re: How many miles did you drive during the year of the pandemic?
Post by: Scott5114 on April 13, 2021, 01:52:06 AM
Calendar year 2019 I drove 12,836 miles. In calendar year 2020, I drove only 6,381.
Title: Re: How many miles did you drive during the year of the pandemic?
Post by: bulldog1979 on April 13, 2021, 02:01:40 AM
According to the gas log book in my car, I put just under 10K on the car from mid-March 2020 to mid-March 2021. That's close to the average mileage I put on the car the first year I owned it, July 2017—July 2018, but lower than what I had been doing with some trips other years.
Title: Re: How many miles did you drive during the year of the pandemic?
Post by: kphoger on April 13, 2021, 03:29:06 PM
I keep track of both odometer reading and date for car repairs, but I only keep track of odometer reading for fill-ups.  As such, I don't have an exact 12-month number.

Also, I was in the middle of a trip to Mexico when Kansas started issuing quarantine orders.  Should I include that trip or not?  Tough one.

Anyway...

03/03/2020 – Odometer = 211,546 (replaced brake pads, rotors, shocks, and wheel bearings)
03/14/2020 – Odometer = 212,148 (filled up with gas in Oklahoma on my way to Mexico)
03/21/2020 – Odometer = 213,959 (filled up with gas in Oklahoma on my back from Mexico)
05/22/2020 – Odometer = 214,822 (accident repair)
02/23/2021 – Odometer = 221,048 (replaced coolant expansion tank)
04/13/2021 – Odometer = 222,626 (current)

However, both out-of-state trips I've taken during last year were in borrowed vehicles, because ours was in the shop both times.  500 miles in a mechanic's loaner car to Springfield (MO) and back.  1200 miles in a friend's car to Great Sand Dunes National Park and back.

So, depending on how you count it, my year's total is probably just under 10,000 miles.

By way of comparison, we've owned the vehicle for 4½ years and have put just over 64,000 miles on it during that time, so our average (including last year) is just over 14,000 per year.